While language education programs were created with an equity stance in mind--with the goals of increasing access and facilitating academic success for ethnically and linguistically marginalized students--the larger educational context has compromised access for multiply marginalized students. Recognizing a need for more complex understandings of…

This article explores how language learning is an integral component of progressing linguistic reconciliation in contexts of war and conflict. Sri Lanka is a case where ethnolinguistic division and the devaluation of Tamil as a co-official language has led to linguistic injustice for Tamil people and users of Tamil. In the post-war landscape,…

Pakistan, one of the eight countries comprising South Asia, has more than 212.2 million people, making it the world's fifth most populous country after China, India, USA, and Indonesia. It has also the world's second-largest Muslim population. Eberhard et al. (Ethnologue: languages of the world, SIL International, 2020) report 77 languages used by…

This study aimed to explore the implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy by public elementary teachers in the Philippines through a case study approach. Specifically, the study sought to examine how three elementary teachers in one public school institution distinctively implement the MTB-MLE policy in…

Language planning and policy (LPP), as a field of research, emerged to solve the "problem" of multilingualism in newly independent nation-states. LPP's principal emphasis was the reproduction of one-state, one-language policies. Indigenous languages were systematically erased through top-down, colonial medium-of-instruction policies,…

Through ethnographic fieldwork and sociological theory drawing from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this article describes possibilities and restrictions for Chinese language education for Chinese-diasporic youth in the San Francisco area, 50 years after "Lau v. Nichols." I examine four sites of this education, all of which serve…

This study examined how three champion principals of Asian language dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs--Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin--in California have navigated the oscillating language-in-education policies after the Lau decision. We explored principals' various roles through a lens of agency in a social justice leadership…

Advocacy strategies are characterized by collaborations amongst various stakeholders working together to create changes and reforms. In language education policy, this refers to various types of initiatives and activities intended to create language policy reforms on local and/or national levels. In this paper such activities are traced, analyzed…

Choosing which additional language to include in national curricula and when to begin teaching it are important educational policy decisions. The current study aims to provide a contextually embedded picture of such policymaking process in the Iranian context. More specifically, the study is intended to explain the agency mechanism of different…

Although national and EU policies and recommendations encourage varied language learning, English has ruled as the most studied foreign language, while other languages are decreasingly being studied in basic and upper secondary education in Finland. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of this development in practice.…

Using a case study design, this research explores how two department chairs, Jan and Tammy, in community colleges implement AB 705, an assessment policy impacting California ESL programs. AB 705 seeks to centralize previous multiple measures legislation in California by requiring the use of high school data in community college course placement.…

Dual language (DL) programs propose to be vehicles of social justice and transformation by valuing an additional language other than the dominant one in a society and thereby contesting language hierarchies and the subordination of those who speak/use a non-dominant language (Flores, Flores, Educational Policy 30:13-38, 2016; Menken and García,…

This article is about current policy in the coordination of opportunities for adult migrants in England to learn English. People who move to a different country experience a need to learn the dominant language of their new environment, to support their settlement. A willingness to learn the language is a marker of social inclusion from a political…

This article is about navigating asylum, employment and language policy in a new country as an asylum seeker. Through the story of one individual, we show that profound inequalities are exacerbated when forced migrants are limited in their choice of language they might study or use. The individual is Tailor F, an Iraqi man seeking asylum, and the…

In the Nordic countries, policy debates about English often highlight the threat of domain loss for national languages, but the high status of English may also have a differential impact on people in Nordic societies. This article investigates a policy gap in Norwegian upper secondary education, whereby an advanced English subject requirement may…